I sent off a set of pcb files to a pcb fabricator recently, and today I was notified thae were having a problem with the .TXT drill file I had supplied, and could I send them an EXCELLON format file instead?
So I generated the drill files using EXCELLON (produced a .dri file and a .TXT file), and I compared the output to the GERBER_RS274X file.
Now, the board has a grand total of 98 drill holes. The EXCELLON .TXT file was just over 100 lines long, and looked like:
%
M48
M72
T01C0.0320
T02C0.0360
T03C0.0400
T04C0.1300
%
T01
X9800Y2750
X9800Y3750
X9800Y8750
X9800Y9750
X9800Y4750
X9800Y5750
X9800Y7750
X9800Y6750
X9800Y10750
etc.
Fairly easy to grasp the general idea of what's going on, with the X and Y coordinates for each hole taking up one line. Some other info not quite sure what's going, presumably set-up info for drill size, etc. But anyway, nothing very surprising.
OTOH, I got a bit of a shock looking at the GERBER_RS274X .TXT file.
Obviously a different format, with the file starting off like this:
G75*
G70*
%OFA0B0*%
%FSLAX24Y24*%
%IPPOS*%
%LPD*%
%AMOC8*
5,1,8,0,0,1.08239X$1,22.5*
%
%ADD10C,0.0010*%
D10*
X011360Y014680D02*
X011362Y014719D01*
X011368Y014757D01*
X011377Y014795D01*
X011391Y014831D01*
X011407Y014867D01*
X011428Y014900D01*
X011451Y014931D01*
etc., finishing up with:
X018950Y010980D01*
X004300Y007630D02*
X003500Y008430D01*
X003500Y007630D02*
X004300Y008430D01*
M02*
but the file went on for over 3600 lines! To describe drilling 98 holes!
That just sounds nutty to me. What's up? Is my version of Eagle (6.2) producing wacky GERBER_RS274X drill files for some reason?
I'm new to Eagle, and I thought I'd ask the more experienced Eagle users here to compare experiences.